The use of radiation to treat medical conditions comprises a known area of prior art endeavor. For example, radiation therapy comprises an important component of many treatment plans for reducing or eliminating unwanted tumors. Unfortunately, applied radiation does not inherently discriminate between unwanted materials and adjacent tissues, organs, or the like that are desired or even critical to continued survival of the patient. As a result, radiation is ordinarily applied in a carefully administered manner to at least attempt to restrict the radiation to a given target volume.
Radiation-treatment plans typically serve to specify any number of operating parameters as pertain to the administration of such radiation dosings with respect to a given patient. For example, many treatment plans provide for exposing the target volume to possibly varying dosages of radiation from a number of different directions.
The development of such plans typically comprises a multi-step process. This can include, for example, acquiring or otherwise accessing patient information, defining structures of interest (regarding, for example, the treatment target, adjacent organs, and so forth), creating a field setup, optimizing a treatment plan, calculating a treatment dose (or doses), evaluating and approving the plan, and scheduling the corresponding treatment. Accordingly, the development of such a plan (or plans) often comprises a lengthy process. Such temporal considerations do not always match the needs of patients, treatment planners, technicians, administrators, and other interested parties.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.